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Our Racial and Ethnic Roots in all their Tangled Diversity are What’s Best about this Country

February 5, 2018 - 2:12pm  lindorff

Trumpian White Supremacy has it All Wrong

by:

Dave Lindorff

In my years of living in places like China, Hong Kong and Germany, and of traveling and spending time in countries like Finland, Austria, Italy, France, Laos, Taiwan, Japan and other places, it has often struck me how unusual the US is, with its polyglot population. All in all, despite the examples of prejudice, the institutional racism and the challenges faced by "minorities" here, we do relatively well at accepting each other, at least when compared to many much more racially uniform countries, or to countries where different ethnicities, religions or linguistic groups live in their own discrete regions, with little mixing, as in Russia, Spain, China, Iran or Ukraine. Looked at from abroad, we are a relatively accepting and tolerant society. Especially these days we form friendships and intermarry across racial and religious lines pretty easily and among younger people increasingly often, which is encouraging. But even as this is going on, or because it is happening, there is an ugly reaction, particularly among those who are white, who see their dominant position in the US under threat. It is a big part of the appeal and success of President Trump, ironically the child of immigrants himself.

We all need to resist that reaction, and openly celebrate our different roots, including the different roots that many of us carry within our own selves and families. That richness and the acceptance of that diversity is what is best about the United State, and it is much more powerful than the ugliness, racism and intolerance of those who continue to resist its inevitable progress.

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